Staten Island Advance photoA new Consumer Reports survey on hospital safety rates Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, above, higher than it does Staten Island University Hospital, which operates two campuses. RUMC earned a 50 on the magazine's 100-point scale. SIUH, earned a 44. The average score for the 117 hospitals included from New York state was 42.2.Arleen Ryback, the director of public affairs for SIUH, said it was not necessarily fair to liken inner-city hospitals to rural ones because of the varied demands hospitals face. No New York state hospital made the cut for the magazine's Top 10 listing.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With healthcare so prominently featured in recent news, it's hard to ignore a new Consumer Reports survey on hospital safety in which no hospitals in New York state made the cut for the magazine's Top 10 listing.

The survey rates Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, higher than it does Staten Island University Hospital, which operates two campuses.

Three New York state hospitals are listed among the 10 worst, including two in New York City - Harlem Hospital Center and Kings County Hospital Center - which were also ranked among the worst five hospitals in the nation.

The magazine reports that nationwide 180,000 patients die each year after mistakes are made in hospitals and that an additional 1.4 million leave hospitals badly hurt.

The average score for the 117 hospitals included from New York State was 42.2.

Hospitals in the state tended to score above average, with 58 hospitals, including the two on Staten Island, scoring above 42; seven scoring at the average, and 52 scoring below average.

"The measure of a hospital cannot be defined by a limited set of parameters," said Richard J. Murphy, President and CEO of RUMC.

Murphy pointed out RUMC's neonatal intensive care unit, which he said "maintains the lowest mortality rate in the metropolitan area," the hospital's award-winning stroke center, and he also added that "RUMC recorded zero site infections for hip replacements in 2011."

Arleen Ryback, the director of public affairs for SIUH, said it was not necessarily fair to liken inner-city hospitals to rural ones because of the varied demands hospitals face.

"When you're comparing a smaller hospital in a different location to a larger one - when you're dealing with different populations - you're going to get different results," she said.

Ms. Ryback also cited the government-sponsored Medicare/Medicaid multi-year study as a more reliable indicator of a hospital's efficacy.

The Consumer Reports survey rated hospitals based on the number of infections contracted by patients on-site, frequency of readmissions, communication between hospital staff and patients, rate of CT scanning, further complications among patients, and frequency of mortality.

Both Island hospitals were rated similarly within the categories, each receiving good ratings in the infections and scanning classifications and poor ratings in readmissions and communication.

Consumer Reports surveyed 18 percent of the 6,268 hospitals in the United States, consulting "patients, physicians, hospital administrators, and safety experts,...medical literature, and...hospital investigations and inspections," according to the article. 